High-speed, high-bandwidth communications are increasingly in demand as populations and population densities increase. Distributed wireless networks comprised of multiple locally-communicating MIMO nodes may be able to meet this demand. Each node may be used to convey network communications between a backbone and end user devices. The distributed nodes may be particularly useful in dense urban areas, or in remote locations lacking substantial infrastructure. The nodes can be installed and managed by local residents, facilitating a versatile solution adaptive to the needs and circumstances of a particular community.
To minimize latency and maximize throughput, the Media Access Control (MAC) protocol in many wireless backhauls is based on either Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) or Time Division Duplexing (TDD). Wireless nodes may need to be tightly synchronized in timing (sampling rate) and carrier frequency to maximize the spectral efficiency of the MAC. Unfortunately, to minimize costs and make such deployments feasible, the components used in a given node may be susceptible to various errors. In addition, the remote character of some deployments make it uneconomical or unfeasible to service the nodes, resulting in gradual errors in nodes possessing even high quality components. These errors, such as defective clock patterns can result in poor or no viable communications between neighboring nodes. Accordingly, there exists a need for systems and methods to compensate for node errors to facilitate effective clock synchronization.
While the flow and sequence diagrams presented herein show an organization designed to make them more comprehensible by a human reader, those skilled in the art will appreciate that actual data structures used to store this information may differ from what is shown, in that they, for example, may be organized in a different manner; may contain more or less information than shown; may be compressed and/or encrypted; etc.
The headings provided herein are for convenience only and do not necessarily affect the scope or meaning of the claimed embodiments. Further, the drawings have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be expanded or reduced to help improve the understanding of the embodiments. Similarly, some components and/or operations may be separated into different blocks or combined into a single block for the purposes of discussion of some of the embodiments. Moreover, while the various embodiments are amenable to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are described in detail below. The intention, however, is not to limit the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the embodiments are intended to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the disclosed embodiments as defined by the appended claims.